AN END... AND A BEGINNING

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” - Mark Twain

As yet, there have been no such reports - exaggerated or not - at least as far as my own death is concerned. And I’ll be perfectly content to keep it that way.

As far as Blog d’Elisson is concerned, however, it is a different story. This is my last post on this site.

Oh, do not weep for my silly little blog. I will continue my Bloggy Activities elsewhere. My new site, Lost in the Cheese Aisle, is up and running, and I hope you will take the time to update your blogrolls, RSS feeds, subscriptions, and what-not. So if this exercise in Self-Aggrandizement and Time-Wastage has appealed to you, you won’t miss a thing. The main difference between Bd’E and Lost in the Cheese Aisle is the name. (Well, that and the URL.) Same shit, different place.

Why change? Inquiring minds, I am sure, will want to know. There are two main reasons.

One, I have never really liked the title of this blog. It’s lame. Originally, it was going to be a placeholder until I could think of something I liked better, and then I just got lazy. Whereas “Lost in the Cheese Aisle” is better reflective of my state of mind most days... it’s how the Missus describes me when I’m walking around in a state of mental befoggedness.

Two, I wanted to go back to the Blogger commenting system. Sure, it sucks... but not as much as Echo. I was perfectly happy with the Haloscan commenting I had installed almost six years ago, but when Echo took over Haloscan, they discarded every useful feature and replaced them with Utter Shit. Echo is user-unfriendly and a general Pain in the Ass. Ditching it is a fine side effect of switching to a new site.

If you wanted a third reason, how ’bout “Skippy did it”? He is none the worse for wear after killing off his old Enjoy Every Sandwich site and replacing it (after a brief hiatus) with Postcards of the Hanging. So there is that.

Sometimes change - shaking things up, moving on - can spur one on to greatness. At the very least, it’s one way to escape the status quo and preserve the illusion of personal progress... to get out of one’s old rut, thus enabling one to begin scraping out a new one.

I have been writing here for almost six years, logging almost 450,000 site visits and slapping up 4,000 posts. It’s time to start stinking up another crib.

See you on the other side. Vale atque ave.

IN WHICH ELISSON WELCOMES YET ANOTHER SUCKER... ERRR, ONLINE JOURNALIST... TO THE BLOGOSPHERE

What would possess a real writer - someone who actually made a successful, decades-long career out of journalism - to start a blog?

Well, considering the declining fortunes of print media, maybe it’s a case of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” It may not be a valid explanation of the facts on the ground, but it works for me.

Regardless of his reasons, my friend Nor Grebnief has decided to take up blogging. His brand-spanking-new site is called This&That; I encourage you to pay him a visit.

Even if he does cop to ironing his underwear. Yeef!

AN UNWARRANTED ACCUSATION

Every once in a while, one of my daughters will discover that something I say - an expression, comment, or observation I use frequently - is not entirely original.

An example: When someone compliments me for doing a good turn, I may occasionally respond, “Well, I am the Nice One.” One day, the girls realized that I hadn’t been the first to utter that statement - I had lifted it from the 1981 Terry Gilliam film Time Bandits, where it is spoken by Ralph Richardson as the Supreme Being.

When someone asks me how I am, I may respond, “I’m better than bad; I’m good.” Tautological, perhaps, but hardly original. Ren & Stimpy Show fans will recognize it from the fake ad for “Log.”

It’s Log
It’s Log
It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood
It’s Log
It’s Log
It’s better than bad, it’s good!

Today, after watching Time Bandits for perhaps the 576th time, the Mistress of Sarcasm asked me whether it was that movie that inspired me to wear colanders on my head. For it seems one of the Bandits - Fidgit, played by none other than Kenny Baker of R2-D2 fame - spends the entire film wearing a colander atop his pate.


Time Bandits, 1981. Kenny Baker (second from left) sports a colander throughout the movie.

My truthful answer, for once: No. Time Bandits never crossed my mind when I first wore a Perforated Metallic Chapeau. My muse was none other than that most estimable Velociman, who had written a post about (of all things!) a vintage colander. Bah, I remember thinking. What’s the point of simply writing about mundane kitchen devices... why not use them for comic effect? Thus was born the legendary Colander Borg-Man.

I don’t claim to be the first to slap a spaghetti strainer on my dome - hell, there’s a whole bunch of idiots on Flickr who have evidently been doing it for years - but I certainly did not steal the idea from Time Bandits. (If I had, I might’ve done it sooner.)

It’s nice to know, though, that I follow in the footsteps of a Cinematic Giant (so to speak).

A DISTURBING TREND

Some time back, I wrote a post that mentioned the Hershey Bar Scam. [Never mind that it was a post about toilet paper, a product that should probably never be mentioned in the same breath as Hershey bars for several scatologically pungent reasons.]

Just to refresh your memory, the Hershey Bar Scam was the sneaky way the good folks in the chocolate industry dealt with fluctuating raw material costs. Instead of jacking up the price of a candy bar to cover increased raw material costs, they would simply shrink the bar... and so it was that the 2-ounce nickel Hershey bar you could have bought in 1930 eventually withered away to a mere ¾ ounce less than forty years later. Things might have gone on like that even longer, but it got to the point where you would have needed a magnifying glass to see a nickel chocolate bar - and so prices began to rise.

This has been going on so long, I no longer pay attention to it... and, probably, neither do you. Getting less stuff for more money is nothing new. Anyone who visits a supermarket - especially if one is there for the purpose of purchasing food in order to feed one’s family - is all too familiar with the phenomenon. It affects way more than chocolate bars. Hell, it affects way more than just food.

Cars used to have humongous fuel tanks as a matter of routine. Twenty or twenty-five gallon tanks were common in family sedans. Now you see tanks that size only in Winnebagoes. And yet it costs a lot more to fill today’s dinky-ass 14.5-gallon tanks than anyone would have imagined back before the first Oil Shock hit back in 1973-74. Again - this is nothing new.

But lately, an even more disturbing trend has surfaced...

Ole Phat Stu models the latest Euro-Colander.

Bedam! They’re shrinking colanders now!

GO HERE. READ THIS.

When you’re too lazy to come up with any Bloggy Content of your own, it’s always nice to be able to fall back on the old blogroll.

Take LeeAnn, f’r instance. Her “Random Thoughts While Watching TV” post had me pissing myself laughing. (PMSL, I believe, is how the younguns say it these days.)

Here’s a sample: “When did Jamie Lee Curtis become the keymaster to the pooping-well gate?” It’s a question I have asked myself many, many times... but never out loud.

Go here and read the whole thing.

NEW DIGS...

...for my fellow Jawja blogger Dax Montana, who has switched blog domains.

The Dax Files may now be found here... so be sure to update your links and/or RSS feed subscriptions.

I’m pleased to note that the esteemed Mr. Montana has moved his archives to the new site as well. I would have hated to think that I might no longer have access to some of his past classics, but, happily, that is not the case.

OUCH

Eric, the Straight White Guy, is apparently suffering from an unfortunate medical condition. Please join me in wishing him a speedy recovery.

As unfortunate medical conditions often do, this reminds me of a joke my buddy Irwin likes to tell. Seems there was a young lad who, while taking a leak, had the misfortune of having the toilet seat fall, whereupon his little penis was smashed between the seat and the rim of the bowl.

The boy’s wails of pain brought the nursemaid a-running. She immediately figured out what happened and began gently stroking his petzl in order to try to comfort him.

The lad’s sobbing gradually abated. Still sniffling, he said to the nursemaid, “Now, kiss it.”

She answered, “You and your father should both rot in hell.”

GROUCHY, FOR A REASON

Denny Wilson, the Grouchy Old Cripple, in a non-grouchy moment.

You’d be grouchy too, if some asshat out-of-control skier crashed into you and gave you a subdural hematoma.

That’s the situation our favorite Grouchy Old Cripple is dealing with right now. It’s a potentially deadly injury, but Denny is a tough bastard who will be back to speed (keyn ayin hora) before too long.

Tough, yes: As the Wiseass Jooette herself says,

Denny is the Chuck Norris of cripples. When Denny does a pushup, he isn’t pushing himself up — he’s pushing the earth down. When Bruce Banner gets mad, he turns into the Hulk. When the Hulk gets mad, he turns into Denny.

I expect it won’t be too long before our favorite SRF­^® is back, filling the Interwebz with Saturday boobage, blonde jokes, and guitar; Sunday metal; Monday puns; and the inimitable AOTW.

Update: More on Denny’s current condition here.

BIZARRE MUSICAL CONNECTIONS

I’m always amazed about the bizarre and mystickal connections that reveal themselves through this business of blogging.

Take, for example, Eric (the Straight White Guy) and Dax Montana, fellow members of the loose confederation we call the Jawja Blodgers.

Now let’s select three musical artists, not quite at random: Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, and Don Van Vliet, AKA Captain Beefheart.

Those who know Eric know that he is a Tom Waits fan. It’s a bit less obvious to the casual observer, but Dax likes Captain Beefheart. And, of the three, my strong preference is for Frank Zappa... although I like all three.

[I’ll confess that I’m always surprised to find others among my friends and acquaintances who admire the work of Captain Beefheart. He’s not the most accessible artist out there... a bit of an acquired taste, as Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons) will tell you:

The first time I heard Trout Mask [Trout Mask Replica, Beefheart’s landmark album], when I was 15 years old, I thought it was the worst thing I’d ever heard. I said to myself, they're not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony.

Then I listened to it a couple more times, because... a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realized they were doing it on purpose: they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I’d ever heard.

It may not be the best album I’ve ever heard, yet parts of it are brilliant. But we’re not talking Top 40 hit radio here.]

These three artists are connected, just as we three bloggers are connected.

Frank Zappa and Don Van Vliet were friends as far back as junior high school, with Zappa later producing Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica. Beefheart contributed vocals to Zappa’s “Willie the Pimp” - the second cut on Hot Rats - and later the two would tour together. The Zoot Allures album was one product of that collaboration.

As for Tom Waits, he was the opening act at several Zappa concerts in 1973-74... alas, not at the April 27, 1973 show at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre where I first saw Zappa.

Now: I can somehow imagine Dax enjoying Beefheart. After all, he is full of surprises. Even likes the Mahavishnu Orchestra, fer cryin’ out loud! And from there, it’s not a huge stretch to imagine him enjoying Zappa... or even Waits.

Eric is another story. Somehow, I can’t picture him enjoying Zappa or Beefheart quite as much as he likes Tom Waits. Or the early Tom Waits, anyway.

But I could be wrong. Not only is there no arguing about taste (de gustibus non est disputandum, after all), but sometimes there’s no understanding it, either.

ON UNWANTED CHANGE

Kevin Kim posed a question in a recent comment:

“Getting used to your new comment setup here. Got sick of Haloscan?”

No, Kevin. I did not get sick of Haloscan, alas.

I installed Haloscan commenting on this site some five years ago. I did it mainly because Blogger did not provide trackback at the time; Haloscan offered trackback along with a robust, relatively spam-free commenting system.

With Haloscan, I was able to monitor all incoming comments from a single screen, with each comment associated with the post on which it was left. It was convenient; it was easy. And did I mention (relatively) spam-free?

Alas, Haloscan has morphed into Echo, which, while offering a few new gewgaws and gimcracks, has taken away all the functionality I enjoyed with Haloscan. My choice was “Convert... or lose all your old comments.”

I converted. And I am mighty displeased with the results, to the point where I may very well bail on this new Echo system. That is, unless they see fit to restore some or all of the old Haloscan funtionality. Hell, even Blogger comments are better than this crap.

Any other (former) Haloscan users care to weigh in?

KEYWORDS, WE GOT KEYWORDS

I’m always fascinated by the search terms people stick into Google and other such Electronickal Searchy Devices, particularly the ones that cause the searchers to be directed here. F’rinstance, here are the most popular keywords people were using today:

harpo marx gookie face pictures
leo kottke
old time gilgo beach
crack blood bowl 1.1.2.2
hydrodynamic science projects
she’s vibrator dependent blogspot
harelip jokes
half rubber game images
peter heering liqueur
100-word poems
underpants poems
boys aim low
meaning klattu barada nikto
chester karras
kippas under fedora
underpants poem

OK, I understand why some of these keywords might send someone here. I’ve either written about some of these things, or they’ve shown up in one or more of my Friday Random Ten posts.

The “crack blood bowl” one had me scratching my head, though. Seems there’s some sort of video game called Blood Bowl, with a patch available for same. But to find me, someone had to scroll through five pages of Google results, only to find my April 2005 archive, which by coincidence contained the (widely separated) words “crack,” “blood,” and “bowl.” As in “crack for toddlers,” “iron-poor blood,” and “bowl of Grape-Nuts.” I’m guessing that’s not what this person was looking for.

How useful all this is is anyone’s guess, but I’ll confess to feeling a certain perverse satisfaction in knowing that when anyone Googles the term “underpants poem,” this site leads the list of 1,110,000 results. Good to know I’ve accomplished something important in my span on this planet.

ANOTHER USELESS STATISTIC

According to my Sitemeter, this little exercise in self-aggrandizement and time-wastage should see its 400,000th visitor sometime in the next couple of days.

400,000. Yeef.

If you were to assume that each site visit was from a different person (an obviously wrong assumption), and you were to lay those people head-to-toe, it would make a line of (very uncomfortable) people 43.4 miles long. Mash ’em all into a single cube, and that cube would weigh something like 31,000 short tons... somewhat shy of a Metric Buttload, but still impressive.

The fact is, however, that this site somehow does attract Repeat Offenders Visitors, some of whom I have actually met face-to-face. It’s one of the little pleasures of This Bloggy Thing We Do.

But whether we have broken bread together in Real Life, or are solely Electronic Acquaintances, I’m glad you have stopped by to visit my demented little corner of the Internet...

<BARTLES & JAYMES>

...and thank you for your support!

</BARTLES & JAYMES>

Update: Visitor #400,000 (IP 69.254.192.172) zoomed through Sunday evening, December 13, at 11:46:44 pm EST, from somewhere in Tucson, Arizona. Next milestone: half a million!

TIGER EXPLAINS IT ALL...

...right here.

Or, more properly put, Skippy explains it all. L’affaire Tigre, that is.

DYSTOPIA

A few weeks ago, Velociman (who writes like a chimerical combination of William Faulkner and Hunter S. Thompson) e-mailed me a link to some amazing conceptual art: images from a video game that is being designed for the Wii system by Warren Spector and his Junction Point Studios. “Epic Mickey,” they call this Work-in-Progress.

Imagine Walt Disney World after the Steampunk Apocalypse, and you’ll get the flavor of it. Twisted Bizarro-World versions of the EPCOT dome, Cinderella’s castle, et alia. The Magic Kingdom as seen through a glass, extremely darkly...



Remember in Back to the Future Part II, after the Biff Tannen of 1955 gets hold of Marty McFly’s 2015-vintage sports almanac? With his knowledge of the results of future sporting events, Biff makes a fortune gambling and remolds the formerly idyllic Hill Valley into a mini-Vegas of casinos, luxury hotels, and cheap hookers... an evil Alternate History. Warren Spector has wreaked a similar transformation on Mickey and his friends.

Velociman and I discussed the matter at length. Was this dystopian, dark vision of Disneyish innocence laid waste not simply art to be assessed on its own merits, but a visual analogy of the current State of the Union?

“You’ve got to post about this,” I told him. “It’s right up your alley.”

I sat back and waited... and waited... and waited. Knowing Velociman’s strange Bloggy Work-Ethic, I knew that the much-anticipated (by me, anyway) post had a probability somewhere south of 30 per centum of ever appearing.

But, at last, it has appeared... and it is eloquent.

Look: Nobody writes quite like Velociman. Whether he’s engaging in a political rant, ruminating on the twists and turns of daily life, reminiscing about childhood days with the legendary Senator, or posting photos of some horrific injury, there’s never any denying the man’s incredible verbal gifts.

In this post, however, he eschews using his own words, relying instead upon one of the great American bards to set lyrics to the visual music. And he swats it right out of the park.

Go thou and read it. It is food for thought... with some nice Eye-Candy for dessert.

ARE THE TWITS TAKING OVER?

Brandon Hoover, who writes at javajive, asks a timely question: “Has micro-blogging destroyed your blog?”

As new social networking and communications platforms like Facebook and Twitter gain in popularity and influence, it’s not an idle question. I see more and more bloggers on Facebook these days, and there are a few who have drunk deep draughts of the Twitter Kool-Aid, for better or for worse.

Here is what I told Brandon in his comments:

I’ve been quoted as saying that Twitter is blogging for people with ADHD.

Bad Twitter feeds are full of the minutiae of people’s lives... good Twitter feeds are like little blogposts. But while 140 characters is wonderful for pithy aphorisms, it is no substitute for the rich language of a well-written blog post.

I will post maybe two to five tweets a week... and twice as many “real” blogposts. But I have seen other bloggers go off the deep end, neglecting their blogs but spewing forth hundreds of tweets. Feh.

In the ideal world, there’s a scenario in which the quick, viral nature of Twitter, the “selected audience” character and interactivity of Facebook, and the “throw it on the wall and see what sticks” quality of blogging reach a dynamic equilibrium, complementing and enhancing each other. We’ll see.

Now: Whadda you think? Do Facebook and/or Twitter mean the end of blogging as we know it? Or do all these platforms somehow enhance each other, creating a synergistic Face-Twit-Bloggity-World in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts?

LOVE-SHEEP AND ROCKETS

The Tellico Junction Café, a landmark of downtown Englewood, Tennessee. [Photo courtesy Teresa.]

Set aside your brain
And get on the little train to the junction.
(Tellico Junction)
You won’t get much sleep,
There’s Inflatable Sheep at the junction.
(Tellico Junction)

Lotsa curves, you bet -
Even more when you get
To the junction.
(Tellico Junction)

There’s a little blogmeet
That is really neat near the junction.
(Tellico Junction)
With the Straight White Guy
You can go get fried at the junction.
(Tellico Junction)
And that’s Grouchy Denny,
He’s actin’ sorta friendly at the junction.
(Tellico Junction)

There are people of a Certain Age who will have no trouble recognizing the (somewhat altered) lyrics to the theme song of a television program that ran from 1963-70. The show was one of several popular sitcoms that celebrated the virtues of Rural Life and the idiocy of Rural People. Or so it seemed to me at the tender age of, say, eleven.

We have our own way of celebrating Rural Life in this day of the Internet; of blogs, Facebook and Twitter; of texting, sexting, and Swine Flu Infexting. And that is to head out to McMinn County, Tennessee on a weekend in late October, there to celebrate the birthday of Eric, the Straight White Guy.


The Straight White Neighborhood at dusk.

The agenda varies from year to year in its minor details, but there are generally certain Traditional Elements. Friday dinner, a honkin’ big salad and several pans of baked ziti by the lovely Boudicca (this year with meat sauce contributed by Eric hizzownself). Saturday morning, a typical Southern country breakfast at the Tellico Junction Café. Saturday evening, Eric’s country-style ribs and a pot of Englewood Baked Beans. Sunday morning, a pile of scrambled eggs and whomp biscuits whipped up by Yours Truly, accompanied by SWMBO’s amazing Apricot Kugel... after which everyone scatters to the four winds.

There are other activities besides Face-Stuffing, of course. For example, there is a certain amount of Drinkage, to be expected any time a small mob of Online Journalists gathers. And there are sundry other pleasures.

This year, alas, no shooting, thanks to a week of wet weather that left the range a bit swampy. But we have Eric’s pool table by way of compensation... and, this year, a fleet of model rockets courtesy of Yabu. (I even brought one that had been moldering in my basement for 27 years... now it’s moldering in the woods behind the Straight White Compound, where it is likely to stay for the next 27 years.) And we have Dolly, the inflatable Love-Ewe. And the Bully. And the Pachinko Machine. And guitars. And pith helmets. (“No matter who you’re with, it’s good to take a pith!”)

The best part about the weekend is the chance to reconnect with Blodgy Friends... and make new ones. Dax Montana, Grouchy Old Denny, Recondo 32 and Georgia, LeeAnn, Bou, Jerry, Teresa, Yabu, Richard, Tommy, and El Capitan were all there this year. (A few of the Usual Suspects were, alas, missing this year... but that’s life.) Nevertheless, we have ample time to swap stories, fire rockets, test people’s olfactory capabilities (“Get a whiff of this with your eyes closed. Can you guess what it is?” “Why... it’s a Bull Scrotum!”), and watch Eric tweeze belly-hairs from an absinthe-raddled, passed-out Dax.

These annual Hysterics at Eric’s are a little hard to describe to those who have never experienced a blogmeet, but you can take it to the bank - we know how to enjoy a weekend. All that’s missing is the railroad water tank for the ladies to use for skinny-dipping!

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN MODEL ROCKETRY

A Bloggy Rocket heads for the firmament.

I’ve written before about one of the great Nerdly Hobbies from my youth: Model Rocketry.

Apparently, I’m not the only nerd out there... because the infamous Yabu loves his rockets, too. So much so that he brought a pile of rocket-launchy supplies to the recent Hysterics at Eric’s.



There’s something magical about the combination of rocket-powered projectiles and half-drunken bloggers that sets the blood a-tingle. And Eric has the perfect location, with no nearby trees or obstacles that might interfere with recovery. Not.

We’ve indulged our Rocket Jones at earlier gatherings, most notably three years ago. But this year’s flights were exceptional. We made five successful recoveries out of seven launches, leaving two rockets to decompose slowly in the woods that surround the Straight White Compound. And every flight was picture-perfect, with the recovery systems deploying exactly as designed.

Speaking of recovery systems, we managed to steal a march on the model rocketry industry by inventing a totally new method... something that does not involve the conventional techniques of induced instability, parachutes, streamers, or gyroscopic motion - all long-established techniques of ensuring a rocket’s safe and undamaged return to earth.

I’m proud to introduce the Inflatable Ovine Recovery System (IORS).

Here’s how it works:

A helium-filled IORS (a spare unit is visible in the photograph below) is attached to a ground-based tether and released to an altitude equal to the expected maximum altitude of the flight.

The rocket is launched, using standard electrical ignition protocol.


Launch using standard electrical ignition, with spare IORS to right. [Photo courtesy of Teresa of Technicalities]

Activation of the ejection charge causes the rocket to dock with the IORS, in the special Docking Receptacle provided. The tether is then reeled in for a successful recovery.

I’ve posted a post-launch image below the fold to illustrate the configuration of the rocket and IORS after a successful recovery. The world of model rocketry will never be the same!

Post-deployment photograph of model rocket with Inflatable Ovine Recovery System (IORS), illustrating successful docking configuration.

FRED, ABED

One of the small pleasures of a weekend at the Straight White Compound is the opportunity to visit with Eric’s cats. There’s the grey, gregarious Fred, shown here curled up in a couple of his beds...





...and there’s Bob, who showed up on the doorstep one day and never left. Bob keeps to himself a bit more, but will wander around the celebrating multitudes now and again and give out with his plaintive, screechy miaow.



I noticed that both of the cats divided their time between hunting varmints in Eric’s big, woodsy back yard (“Hey, Fred - why is that snake steaming?”) and observing the Horde o’ Visiting Blodgers with a wary, bemused eye. They’ve been to these affairs before, clearly.

Update: Friday Ark #267 is afloat, per its custom, at the Modulator. More kitty bloggery is avalable at Carnival of the Cats, the 293rd edition of which is up right now at Elms in the Yard. Number 294 should be posted at Three Tabby Cats in Vienna Sunday evening.

Update 2: CotC #294 is up.

OFFICIAL ENTRANCE

Today marks the Straight White Guy’s official entrance into the late thirties. As opposed to the early or mid-thirties.

There will be a great big Official Celebration sometime in the near term... but in the meantime, it’s not a bad time to think of gifts that are suitable for the occasion.

Hmmm.

Eric has always been partial to the fine distilled beverages of Scotland, but I’ve got to believe that he has pretty much tasted every kind of uisge beatha ever made. So that one’s a dead end.

Maybe it’s time to think outside the box. How about:

Movie tickets?

A nice book?

Or a coffee mug?

Whadda ya think?

In the meantime, please join me in wishing Eric a long, healthy, happy life. As we Red Sea Pedestrians like to say, “Ad meah v’esrim... v’yom.” Until one hundred twenty... and a day.

Why the day?

Well, why would you want someone to croak on his own birthday?

SEARCHING...

Sometimes, just for shits and grins, I like to look at my referrer stats to see just what it is that draws people to this site. One big culprit: Google.

[Diogenes, were he to search for an Honest Man today, might be tempted to use Google. I’m guessing he might not be satisfied with the results.]

Google searches account for a lot of my visitors... but sometimes I wonder whether those visitors have, indeed, found what they are looking for. Here are some from a few hours ago:

• how to counteract okra snot
  
• music for cats blogspot
  
• kishke baking instructions
  
• taleena wi sun prairie or madison
  
• reggae blogspot
  
• a cone of stupidity
  
• harelip and wood eye joke
  
• how to make grape nuts
  
• would i harelip joke
  
• rosh hashanah torah portion
  
• krups waffle recipe
  
• weevils blog

And a few from just a moment ago:

• stephane elisson
  
• hineni prayer
  
• metallic head gear
  
• well adjusted man
  
• red sea pedestrian
  
• derma with gravy
  
• pirat arrrhh
  
• deflowering.com
  
• fluids plane duty free

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that some of these search terms will direct people here, based on all the various crap I write about... but if you’ve come here looking for a Well Adjusted Man, I suspect you have come to the wrong place.